My attention recently was called to a very historic event; on June 2, 1896, Guglielmo Marconi applied to patent the radio. When we think of Marconi as the inventor of the radio, it is easily overshadowed by contemporary inventors of computers, 3-D printing, and copy machines. Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to have …
A new job brings an equal amount of excitement and anxiety. When I joined the Music Section last year, I felt mildly anxious about what kind of patrons I would be working with and what their expectations would be. I am happy to report that it’s been a great year. Over the past year, I’ve …
A few weeks ago, I pulled a little book from the Music Section’s reference collection, An Introduction to Music Publishing: A Tour Through the Music Publishing Operations Involved in Transforming the Composer’s Manuscript Into a Printed Publication and Its Dissemination to the Student and the Performer. The front cover of this book features Beethoven as …
Transcribers. Where would we be without them? All of us who provide braille music, or who need and use braille music, are indebted to the labors of braille music transcribers. So how do you become a music transcriber? (Hint: We need more.) The first step is to take and pass the literary braille course, offered …
Spring has sprung around these parts in Washington, DC, but for this blog post I am going to continue with our international theme and wax poetic about springtime in France. I’m bringing up this geographic location because two well-known French composers, Gabriel Fauré and Jules Massenet, share a birthday today, May 12! Although neither Fauré …
Sí!, Today is Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday and I am taking this opportunity to explain why it is NOT Mexican Independence Day. That date is September 16th, and perhaps that will be a future blog post. But, this holiday celebrates the Mexican army’s victory over the French at the town of Puebla. Mexico has …
When I was an undergraduate student studying music, I became very interested in music from India. Though I did not know how to play a plucked instrument very well, I enjoyed the sound of the sitar. And, whenever I heard someone playing a set of small hand drums called the tabla, I thought about the …
This blog, NLS Music Notes, serves many different purposes, but a general one is getting out the word on the Music Section and the services that it provides. But there are other avenues for outreach. One is exhibiting at conferences of one sort or another. Last year Music Section blogger Amanda Smith wrote about her …
THIS IS A GUEST BLOG BY DONNA KOH, Music Reader Services Librarian in the Music Section As a piano teacher, I’ve witnessed countless times how a student perks up when I start playing the teacher’s duet part during their lesson. It’s a great joy to see a smile spread across the student’s face as the simple …
